11 Museums to Explore in Tuscany

The Accademia Gallery is Florence’s most visited museum right after the Uffizi Gallery. The original statue of Michelangelo’s famous David actually has made the Accademia the most popular museum in Florence. It also has other sculptures by Michelangelo and a large collection of paintings by Florentine artists, mostly from the period 1300–1600, the Trecento to the Late Renaissance. In 2016, it had 1.46 million visitors, making it the second most visited art museum in Italy, after the Uffizi.

The Bargello Museum is located in the impressive Palazzo del Bargello, a fortress with powerful embattlements which surround the austere facade. Begun in 1255, the building was the headquarters of the Capitano del Popolo and later of the Podestà and Council of Justice. In 1574, it became the living quarters for the Captain of Justice (chief of police) and was used as a prison.

This tall structure halfway down Via dei Calzaiuoli looks more like a Gothic warehouse than a church—which is exactly what it was, built as a granary/grain market in 1337. On the ground floor of the square building are the 13th-century arches that originally formed the loggia of the grain market. The second floor was devoted to offices, while the third housed one of the city's municipal grain storehouses, maintained to withstand famine or siege.

La Specola' houses a large zoological collection, the largest collection in the world of eighteenth-century anatomical waxes, the unique collection of the Sicilian coroplast Gaetano Giulio Zumbo, the Salone degli Skeletri . Furthermore, the “ Mineraliter. Stones admirable between Medici and Nature ”proposes an extraordinary selection of worked stones that belonged to the Medici family, flanked by an exhibition of aesthetic minerals from Italy and all over the world.

The Leonardian Museum is located in Vinci, in the Province of Florence, the birthplace of Leonardo Da Vinci. Housed in the two locations of the Palazzina Uzielli and the Castello Dei Conti Guidi, it is one of the largest and most original collections dedicated to Leonardo da Vinci, architect, technologist, and engineer and, more generally, to the history of the Renaissance technique.

The Galileo Museum of Florence is located in Piazza dei Giudici, near the Uffizi Gallery, in the Palazzo Castellani, a building of ancient origins, known in Dante's time as Castello d'Altafronte. It preserves one of the most important collections of scientific instruments in the world, material testimony of the importance attributed to science and its protagonists by the exponents of the Medici dynasty and the Lorraine grand dukes.

The Museo dell Opera del Duomo is a museum in Florence, on the north-east side of the Piazza del Duomo. It collects works of art from the sacred complex of the Duomo of Florence, Giotto's Baptistery, and Bell Tower, with a very important nucleus of Gothic and Renaissance statuary. Among the most important works, works by Andrea Pisano, Arnolfo di Cambio, Nanni di Banco, the original reliefs of the Porta del Paradiso by Ghiberti

Palazzo Controni-Pfanner is located on the edge of the Walls of Lucca, with access from Via Degli Asili 33. The courtyard of Palazzo Pfanner seems to be tailor-made for hosting events. The residence of Palazzo Pfanner, the only part of the building currently open to visitors, contains a large central hall frescoed in the 1920s by the quadraturist Pietro Paolo Scorsini, from which side rooms embellished with period furniture, fine furnishings, and objects branch off.

The San Marco Museum is an Italian state museum; it is located in the monumental part of an ancient Dominican convent located in Piazza San Marco in Florence. The fame of the museum, whose architecture is a Renaissance masterpiece, is mainly due to the presence of works by Beato Angelico, present in many rooms of the convent. One wing is dedicated to the school of San Marco, who also lived and worked here.

The Stibbert Museum is located on via Frederick Stibbert on the hill of Montughi in Florence, Italy. The museum contains over 36,000 artifacts, including a vast collection of armor from Eastern and Western civilizations. It hosts a curious and large collection of weapons, armor, clothing, and objects from different epochs and backgrounds, collected by Federick during the course of his life. At the time of his death, the villa and the collection were donated to the city of Florence.

The Uffizi Gallery is a prominent art museum located adjacent to the Piazza Della Signoria in the Historic Centre of Florence in the region of Tuscany. The Gallery entirely occupies the first and second floors of the large building constructed between 1560 and 1580 and designed by Giorgio Vasari. It is famous worldwide for its outstanding collections of ancient sculptures and paintings. It also has an invaluable collection of ancient statues and busts from the Medici family.